With the rapid development of communications technologies, a wireless local area network (WLAN) technology based on the IEEE 802.11 standard has been considerably developed and widely applied. A WLAN network may include multiple Access Points (APs) and multiple stations (STAs), where each AP may be associated with multiple STAs, and each AP may transmit, using a radio channel, wireless local area network data with a STA that is associated with the AP.
A current method for transmitting wireless local area network data includes, when the AP sends wireless local area network data to a STA associated with the AP, the AP listens on a radio channel. When the radio channel is not occupied over a period of time, the AP accesses the radio channel and acquires a right to use the radio channel. The AP encapsulates wireless local area network data that needs to be transmitted into a PLCP protocol data unit (PPDU), and sends the PPDU to the STA. When a STA associated with the AP sends wireless local area network data to the AP, the STA listens on the radio channel. When the radio channel is not occupied over a period of time, the STA accesses the radio channel and acquires the right to use the radio channel. The STA encapsulates wireless local area network data that needs to be transmitted into a PPDU and sends the PPDU to the AP.
As shown in FIG. 1 and FIG. 2, the first row of FIG. 1 shows a conventional PPDU frame format, and the second row and the third row of FIG. 1 show a PPDU frame format according to 802.11n. FIG. 2 shows a PPDU frame format according to 802.11ac. A STA may encapsulate, by using the frame format of FIG. 1 or FIG. 2, wireless local area network data into a PPDU and send the PPDU to an AP. Accordingly, an AP may encapsulate, by using the PPDU frame format of FIG. 1 or FIG. 2, wireless local area network data into a PPDU and send the PPDU to a STA. L-STF, HT-STF, and HT-GF-STF are short training fields, L-LTF, HT-LTF1, HT-LTF, and VHT-LTF are long training fields, L-SIG, HT-SIG, VHT-SIG-A, and VHT-SIG-B are signaling fields, and Data is a data field.
A WLAN network uses a free unauthorized frequency band, and uses a contention-based access mechanism to acquire a right to use a radio channel. When a STA/AP acquires the right to use the radio channel, wireless local area network data is transmitted between the AP and the STA in a one-to-one relationship. However, the wireless local area network data cannot be transmitted between the AP and the STA in a one-to-many relationship, or between the STA and the AP in a many-to-one relationship, which reduces spectrum utilization and network use efficiency.